The primary purpose of this proposal is to provide the candidate with the training, mentorship, and environmental structure to develop a scientific understanding of the cultural influences on health beliefs, decision-making, and practices, as they relate to well-documented racial and ethnic health disparities. Short-term career development goals include acquiring a broader knowledge base regarding health disparities, population-based cultural norms, health-related decision-making, and health promotion. Intermediate goals include examining race and ethnicity as a proxy variable for understanding disparate health outcomes and the development of a multidimensional instrument for measuring cultural factors that are related to health. Long term goals include becoming an independent researcher with a research agenda focusing on the role that culture plays in health and health disparities, and ultimately, on the development of evidence-based health promotion programs and health system practices that incorporate cultural information. The candidate will build upon existing research skills in measurement, instrument development and community-based research with minority populations. The proposed career development program integrates a structured mentoring program with a panel of local and national expert advisors. To facilitate the candidate's development, the program utilizes formal course work in public health and medical anthropology, well-established minority health and health disparities training workshops and conferences, involvement with community-based health coalitions, research conferences, and research collaborations. In the health literature, several models have been used to describe the mechanisms by which individual factors such as race and ethnicity can influence health behavior and ultimately, health outcomes. In her research, the candidate proposes to examine cultural factors that influence individual characteristics, such as health beliefs, decision-making, and practices, and are a possible contributor to racial and ethnic disparities. To date, no direct measure of culture (for any cultural, racial or ethnic group) exists. To carry out these long-term goals, it is essential that a measure that captures the multidimensional nature of culture and that can be used with different racial and ethnic groups be developed. The proposed research is designed to meet this need through community-based recruitment that utilizes consultation and assistance from three well-established racial and ethnic health coalitions. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods will be used in the instrument development phases. The final phase of the project will examine the psychometric properties of the instrument and include a preliminary examination of the relationship between culture and health beliefs, practices, and decision-making, as well as associated health status and outcomes.